One of my very favorite things to do is clean and organize. My partner and I spent the afternoon today working our way through all the kitchen cabinets and drawers. We love to cook, and we’ve accumulated a lot of gadgets we don’t really use, and when he moved in, we ended up with doubles of quite a few things. It was time to purge some stuff. Here’s how we did it.

1. We worked our way around the kitchen in a clockwise direction. This kept us from missing any cabinets or drawers.

2. Anything we hadn’t used in a year or more went into the donate pile on the dining room table.

3. Anything on the counters we don’t use daily went into the spaces cleared in step two.

4. Any expired food items went in the trash. I clean out the fridge weekly and the pantry once a month, so there wasn’t much food waste, but we did have some expire spices and old coffee.

5. All drawers and cabinets got sprayed with all-purpose cleaner and wiped out before anything went back in.

6. I posted everything I could on my local Buy Nothing group. We will donate anything that doesn’t get picked up.

This sounds really easy, but it does take time, especially if you don’t clean and purge on a regular basis. If you live with someone else, it helps to have them there to help, especially if you’ve recently combined households.

My favorite part of this is that it gets the energy flowing in the kitchen again. Space on the counters and in the cabinets is a great thing! We spend a lot of time in our kitchen and having it functioning at its best is going to make it even more fun to get in there and make something delicious.

In fact, I think it’s time to bake some pie!